Pay tax according to conscience, not the law

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Instead of asking their accountants if a tax avoidance scheme is legal, the rich should ask themselves: is it moral?

Not long after The Times’s story on tax avoidance first broke on Monday night, reactions — some predictable and some odd — began to appear on the comments section of the paper’s website and on Twitter. The predictable response was that the comedian Jimmy Carr, who had satirised aggressive tax avoidance not too long ago, had proved himself to be a roaring hypocrite by engaging in it himself. Let us, however, attain freude through Mr Carr’s schaden a little later, after we have dealt with the oddness.

The oddness was this. Perhaps wanting to stem the tide of Carr-directed abuse, there were